The real founder of the club is said to have been Jacob Tonson, the bookseller; he was for many years their secretary, and, in fact, the very pivot upon which the society revolved. Their meetings were originally held at a house in Shire Lane, close to Temple Bar, a lane which in time became infamous as the resort of thieves, rogues, and ruffians of every kind, though in previous years it had been fashionable. The house where they met was kept by one Christopher Katt, a pastrycook, famous for his mutton pies, which immortalized his name, since they became known by it, Kit being then a vulgar abbreviation of Christopher, and Katt being his surname, and from these pies the club took its name, the pies always forming part of its bill of fare. It seems strange that with so simple a derivation the origin of the name Kit-Kat should have been unknown even to Pope or Arbuthnot—it is uncertain to whom the lines are attributable—who wrote: ’Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name Few critics can unriddle: Some say from pastrycook it came, And some from Cat and Piddle. From no trim beans its name it boasts, Grey statesmen or green wits, But from this pell-mell pack of toasts, Of old Cats and young Kits.’ Surely the name is simply that of the pastrycook, Kit (Christopher) Katt, given to his pies, and has no reference to old cats or young kits or kittens. As regards the pies, Dr. King, in his ’Art of Cookery,’ wrote: ’Immortal made as Kit-Kat by his pies;’ and in the prologue to ’The Reformed Wife,’ a comedy, 1700, is the line: ’A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.’ Tonson had his own and the portraits of all the members painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller; each member gave him his.[#] The canvas was 36 inches by 28 inches, sufficiently long to show a hand, and the size is still known as the Kit-Kat. There were forty-two of those portraits, and they were first hung up in the club-room, but Tonson in time removed them to his country-house at Barn Elms, where he built a handsome room for their reception, and where the club frequently met. At his death in 1736, Tonson left them to his great-nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. The paintings were then removed to the house of his brother at Water-Oakley, near Windsor, and on his death to the house of Mr. Baker, one of the sons of Sir William Baker, who had married the elder of the two daughters of old Tonson; the house of this Mr. Baker is called the Park, situate at Hertingfordbury, where they still remain. [#] They were all engraved in mezzotinto by the younger Faber. As regards the room at Barn Elms referred to above, Sir Richard Phillips, in his ’Morning Walk from London to Kew,’ in 1816, gives an account of his visit to it.